Tag: Original

One of my first real attempts at an augmented kind of full digital photo-realism. Drawn in illustrator and photo-shop and touched up in light-room. I wanted a more surreal vibe for this book as opposed to Saving Hadley’s cover art (will be posted once I’m content with it) which is also realistic but less grounded in a scene or reality. Butterfly Gate’s art on the other hand is all traditional with multimedia touch ups.

The stories have really helped me direct my art and what I wanted to accomplish with that art. Like I had no idea I’d be able to make something like this until I just tried, and I feel like it went pretty well. This is the cover art, but each act will still have it’s own specific artwork, so plenty of fun stuff to work towards and I think this set the tone rather well.

Stuff that went really well: The cracking texture. I found a good balance between distortion and pulling around the structure of the face without ever destroying too much detail that it’d look wonky or even that off. It was probably the hardest part, but I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Canvas dimensions: 4k by 12k pixels (almost fifty inches in the resolution I have set, so it’s actually a pretty big drawing)

Challenges: I redrew the body and sweater three times. Clothes that drape are very difficult to draw with a mouse (I have an Intuos five but actually use a mouse and very small brushes when I shade/texture digital art. I’m weird like that. It is a good mouse with very precise sensitivity settings, so it’s not as hard as it may sound). It’s kind of like pixel art with a LOT of pixels and layers (sixty-three layers). Pretty fun!

Copyright notes: All rights reserved. If you’d like an unmarked copy of the file for personal or print use, ie non-commercial, just let me know and I can get that to you 🙂